Later, as she lay in his arms, spent from their second time making love that night, the coldness returned and would’ve completely engulfed him if she hadn’t placed her hand over his heart and lifted her face to offer a sleepy kiss.
“Should we get some rest?” she asked, her voice hoarse from her last orgasm.
He kissed the top of her head and pulled her in closer. “Go ahead, love. I’m not going anywhere. In a few hours, we’ll go meet with Antonovich’s granddaughter and see what we can discover. But I want you to be careful. If things go south, I want you to forget about me and just do what you need to do to say safe.”
She was quiet for a long moment before lifting up on her elbow to look down at him. She brushed another kiss to his lips and caressed the line of his jaw with the back of her fingers. “I’m not worried aboutme.”
He turned his face away from her to stare at the ceiling. “I am. Maddie, if anything were to happen to you . . .”
With her index finger she tapped his chin, which was thick with stubble. “Hey. We’ve had this discussion, remember? I can take care of myself.”
He shook his head. “Not against these people, love. Antonovich makes his living betraying whoever he can—as long as he can profit from it. And Kozlov had intended that bomb in Boston for me. He won’t stop until he kills me—unless I get to him first.”
“Who are these people anyway?” Maddie asked, letting her hand fall away. “Why are they so determined to kill you? And why are you afraid ofthem? I’ve never known you to be afraid of anyone, Jack.”
Jack sighed. He’d never wanted her to know the truth, but if she was going to help him with Kozlov and Antonovich, she needed to fully understand what they were up against.
“My father was from one of the old families in the Alliance,” he began. “His line was legendary. And he continued that reputation in his own right, becoming one of the most respected operatives in the Order, right alongside Sean Asher.”
“Sean Asher,” Maddie repeated. “That’s Will’s father, right?”
He nodded. “My father’s effectiveness made him a lot of enemies, I guarantee you. But he had a lot of allies as well,confreresandconsoeurshe trusted. One of them was a man named Sergei Antonovich.”
Maddie’s eyes went wide. “The man who wants to kill you was a friend of yourfather?”
He nodded again, starting to feel like one of those bobblehead things on dashboards. “As I’ve mentioned, Antonovich was in the KGB, but he was also in deep with the Russian mob. The man would sell out his own mother for the right price. But he’d proven valuable to my father many times, and so my father trusted him right up until the day someone put a bomb in Father’s car—much like the one that killed Manny.”
Maddie smoothed his chest. “I’m so sorry, Jack.”
“We knew it was the Russian mob, but couldn’t prove it,” Jack told her, covering her hand with his. “And Antonovich was surprisingly quiet on the whole thing, didn’t have a single lead for us. Will, Jacob, me . . . We all lost our fathers to these bastards. I guess they didn’t want us meddling in their business.”
“I’m sensing there’s more to the story,” Maddie surmised.
Jack felt his expression growing colder, harsher. “Will was certain that there was. He insisted his grandfather—the High Commander of the Alliance—look into it. There were too many things about it—how our fathers were targeted—that pointed to our old enemies the Illuminati. But the High Commander had eradicated the Illuminati, or so he claimed. His pride wouldn’t allow him to look deeper.”
“Soyoudid?” she guessed.
Jack nodded. “Will and I both did, but I was still in the UK, so it was easier for me to insinuate myself into their circles.” Here he grinned. “Plus, my Russian’s better than Will’s. So I poked my nose everywhere it didn’t belong, used whatever means necessary to get answers.”
He paused, his shame at what he’d done making the words lodge in his throat. But he had to force them out, had to make sure Maddie understood who he really was.
“One of those means included seducing a woman named Natasha, who happened to be the twenty-two-year-old daughter of the head of the Russian mob. She was sweet, beautiful, trusting.” He laughed bitterly. “Clearly too trusting if she trustedme. Anyway, one night I received word that my cover was blown, the mob was onto me and had put a price on my head. So I left without a word, without a good-bye. I had to abandon my search for answers—and a woman I’d grown to care about.”
Maddie drew back slightly at the ominous, bitter tone of his voice. “What happened to her?”
“I later discovered she’d become pregnant with my child.”
Maddie blinked at him, clearly not quite sure how to react to the bombshell he’d just dropped on her. He had never mentioned having a child, had never mentionedNatasha, for that matter.
He absently twisted the ring on his right hand, which bore the Templar cross, turning it several times with his thumb before continuing. “From what I understand, Natasha hid the pregnancy for several months. If I’d known about it, I would’ve immediately returned and gotten her to the UK or the U.S.—somewhere that the Alliance could’ve kept her safe. But I’d been relocated under my alias and was working for your father at that point, so I hadn’t heard anything.”
“Alias?” Maddie echoed. “What alias?”
He gave her a tight smile. “Jack Grayson is not my real name.”
She laughed, a little bitterly, clearly shocked to know the man she’d been so intimate with had been lying to her on the most basic level. He could see in her eyes that she was hurt, angry. “Of course it isn’t.” She shook her head a little, scrunching up her nose in that adorable way she had, then heaved a sharp exhale. “We’ll come back to that little bit of news later. What happened then? How did you find out?”
“I guess Natasha tried to run from her father when it became impossible to conceal the pregnancy any longer, but she didn’t get far before her father’s men caught up to her.”
